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Series

The Scarlet Pimpernel

The Scarlet Pimpernel series follows Sir Percy Blakeney and his allies as they use disguises, forged papers and carefully staged deceptions to rescue people endangered by the French Revolution. Most volumes are set between the September Massacres of 1792 and the fall of Robespierre in July 1794, moving from revolutionary Paris and the Temple prison to provincial France, Nantes and the Channel coast. The novels combine romantic adventure with the machinery of revolutionary government: denunciations, surveillance committees, prison lists, political trials and the guillotine.

Orczy also extends the Blakeney legend beyond Sir Percy’s own generation. The Laughing Cavalier and The First Sir Percy trace an ancestor through the Dutch Republic and the Eighty Years’ War, while Pimpernel and Rosemary moves forward to post-World War I Transylvania. The sequence can be read as a group of largely self-contained adventures; publication order shows how Orczy expanded the original rescue story into family history, short-story collections and increasingly specific encounters with historical crises.

Reading order

Books in this series (16 books)

The Laughing Cavalier cover

#1 – The Laughing Cavalier

Baroness Orczy

Haarlem, 1623. Gilda Beresteyn overhears a conspiracy involving her brother and Willem van Oldenbarnevelt, Lord of Stoutenburg, who seeks revenge on Maurice of Nassau for the execution of his father. To prevent Gilda warning the stadtholder, the conspirators hire an English soldier of fortune known as…

The First Sir Percy cover

#2 – The First Sir Percy

Baroness Orczy

The Netherlands, March 1624. Three months after the events of The Laughing Cavalier, Diogenes is now Sir Percy Blakeney and prepares to marry Gilda Beresteyn in a double wedding attended by Maurice of Nassau. The celebration is interrupted by military news from the eastern provinces, where…

The Scarlet Pimpernel cover

#3 – The Scarlet Pimpernel

Baroness Orczy

France and England, September 1792. A secret league of English gentlemen removes aristocrats from revolutionary France under the direction of an unknown leader who signs his messages with a small scarlet flower. In London, Sir Percy Blakeney appears to be a wealthy and empty-headed fashion leader,…

Sir Percy Leads the Band cover

#4 – Sir Percy Leads the Band

Baroness Orczy

France, January 1793. As the Convention completes the trial and execution of Louis XVI, Sir Percy Blakeney enters the country disguised among a wandering group of musicians. The deliberately unimpressive band allows him to listen in taverns and move through districts where officials are searching for…

I Will Repay cover

#6 – I Will Repay

Baroness Orczy

Paris, 1793. Juliette de Marny has spent ten years bound by an oath to avenge her brother, who died in a duel with Paul Déroulède. When chance brings her into Déroulède’s household, she discovers that the republican patriot she has been taught to hate is generous,…

The Elusive Pimpernel cover

#7 – The Elusive Pimpernel

Baroness Orczy

England and France, September 1793. Chauvelin is determined to recover his reputation by capturing the Scarlet Pimpernel and destroying the marriage that protects him. He uses the young actress Désirée Candeille and a carefully prepared social challenge to draw Marguerite into a position where Percy must…

Lord Tony’s Wife cover

#8 – Lord Tony’s Wife

Baroness Orczy

Nantes, 1789, and England, 1793. Pierre Adet, a peasant humiliated by the aristocratic de Kernogan family, remakes himself as Martin-Roget and pursues a long revenge against Yvonne de Kernogan. His scheme appears complete when he gains her father’s consent to marriage, but Yvonne loves Lord Antony…

El Dorado cover

#10 – El Dorado

Baroness Orczy

Paris, 1794. Sir Percy Blakeney undertakes his most politically sensitive mission: removing Louis XVII, the imprisoned son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, from the Temple. The plan depends on secrecy, discipline and the ability of the League to operate inside a city governed by suspicion.…

Mam’zelle Guillotine cover

#11 – Mam’zelle Guillotine

Baroness Orczy

France, 1757. After Robert-François Damiens attacks Louis XV, the punishment imposed on him and the suspicion surrounding possible accomplices destroy the world of his daughter Gabrielle. Her grievance becomes fixed on the aristocratic Fernard family, whose fate she associates with her father’s abandonment and death. Decades…

Sir Percy Hits Back cover

#12 – Sir Percy Hits Back

Baroness Orczy

Provincial France, 1793. Fleurette has grown up at a distance from Parisian politics, but the Law of Suspects reaches her village when revolutionary troops begin searching homes and arresting anyone connected with the former aristocracy. Her concern for a neighbouring family and her own concealed parentage…

The Triumph of the Scarlet Pimpernel cover

#14 – The Triumph of the Scarlet Pimpernel

Baroness Orczy

France, 1794. Thérésa Cabarrus enters the struggle between revolutionary factions while her relationship with Jean-Lambert Tallien makes her both politically useful and personally vulnerable. Sir Percy Blakeney becomes involved when Thérésa’s schemes and Chauvelin’s pursuit threaten Marguerite and place the League inside a contest that reaches…

Pimpernel and Rosemary cover

#16 – Pimpernel and Rosemary

Baroness Orczy

Europe after World War I. Rosemary Fowkes, a prominent British journalist, accepts an invitation to report on Romanian administration in Transylvania, a region she knew before the war through her Hungarian friends. She travels with her new husband, Jasper, while Peter Blakeney—the man she once loved…